


It Feels Like Christmas

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 08:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Steve isn’t sure when exactly he started living in the present.</i>
</p><p>Or: the unashamed Christmas fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Feels Like Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song of the same name in 'Muppet Christmas Carol'.

Steve isn’t sure when exactly he started living in the present.

It wasn’t when he opened his eyes, dazed and confused by the remembered voices and the blurred shapes leaning over him, he knows that much. Even in the weeks that followed, he was a traveller lost in time, a man from the 1940s who’d stumbled into the twenty-first century through unlucky accident. (Maybe luck would have meant dying the way he should have.) To put it very simply, he’d been there, but he hadn’t really been there.

Pinpointing the exact moment that changed is hard. Perhaps it was when he and Natasha confirmed a mutual trust through an exchange of glances; when Thor helped him up on a very different battlefield than that which either of them were accustomed to, and expected nothing less than for them to fight on; when Clint included him in a joke, or Bruce in sarcastic commentary; when Tony smiled at him, Steve Rogers, and not at a memory. Perhaps it was the moment they’d all stood together, the Avengers: another ragtag group he was leading against a seemingly unstoppable foe out to take over the world.

Only they’re not the same as his Commandoes, and comparing the two isn’t fair to either. Clint isn’t Bucky; Tony isn’t Howard; none of them match up quite right, and they shouldn’t. Peggy and Colonel Phillips are in the past, and Steve… Well. Steve isn’t, anymore.

Maybe it doesn’t actually matter precisely when he stopped being the man from the past and started living right here, right now. What matters is that he’s realised it.

It’s Christmas Eve. He’s standing in the communal lounge, looking at the Christmas tree which looks like it’s defying physics just fitting in (despite Tony’s tendency towards the spacious – ridiculously so – in architecture). There were so many ‘traditions’ new to him, but he’d forced himself into them: untangling Christmas lights ( _”They’re fresh out of the packet,” Clint had moaned, “how the hell are they already tangled?_ ), watching seventy years’ worth of Christmas movies, tramping through packed shops and trying to restrain Tony’s wallet and mouth. It had been fun. The first time he’d felt like it was Christmas in a while, to be honest.

Tomorrow, he knows, Phil is going to roast the most incredible turkey, and afterwards curl up on the sofa with Clint and Natasha. Thor will regale them with more tales of Jul and his father’s hunt – he has spoken of almost nothing else since flying in a couple of days ago – and Clint will try to match them with tales of war against the terrifying Shoppers. (Clint braved the shops with Phil but no Natasha, for the good of America. Apparently Phil’s Hawkeye senses are specially equipped to detect the moment anything is being considered as a missile.) Jane will be there, explaining human traditions to him, and Betty as well, rising early with Bruce and both looking sleepy and content. Bruce, Steve knows, is happy just being here, and probably won’t believe the presents are his until Tony threatens to stick the tags to his head as proof.

As for Tony, Steve isn’t so sure. It’s likely he’ll spend the entire day trying to sneak down to his workshop to work on Christmas-flavoured mechanical mayhem; it’s possible he’ll head for the first bottle he sees, judging by the conversations Steve’s overheard between him and Bruce about their less well-remembered Christmases.

(Steve might have to spend the rest of his life undoing the damage Howard did, however accidental it might have been. He doesn’t mind at all.)

The point is that it’s Christmas together. For Steve, that’s all that’s ever mattered: Bucky and his mother in Brooklyn, along with anybody else in the street who fancied chipping in to get a taste of how she could cook even with nothing; the Howling Commandoes, Peggy, Phillips, Howard, Bucky, in a French bar and singing the night away, Peggy in that incredible dress that made him love her all over again; and now, the Avengers, complete lunatics piled together into a tower with their name on it.

Christmas.

“If you’re having one of your movie montage moments,” Tony complains from behind him, “I’m going back downstairs.”

“No, you’re not,” Steve replies with a smile, gaze still fixed on the Christmas tree. It’s an odd mishmash of ornaments, from Clint’s tackiest tourist traps ( _”Give me one reason why Santa wouldn’t take a taxi in New York”_ ) through to the elegant intricacies of Natasha’s ornaments ( _”If we’re doing this, then we’re doing this right”_ ). Tony’s lightshow occasionally gets bored and starts shaping patterns and pictures and anything that isn’t the same constant on-off-on of existence. Bruce and Betty wove the tinsel to bind it all together, and Jane removed any mistletoe which sneaked its way in, replacing it with moose and miniature yule logs, care of Darcy. 

“I’m feeling ignored. You drag me out of my workshop because of the date, the least you could do is take me to bed.”

Steve smiles. He supposes that’s fair.

He might not know when he started living in the twenty-first century, but tomorrow, he’ll spend Christmas with the family who brought him here, and in the end, that’s all that matters.


End file.
